Thursday, June 15, 2017

Angels and demons

This
weeks topic - angels and demons - was suggested by Pravin, Besides being an
excellent prequel to Dan Brown's terrific novel The DaVinci Code, angels and
demons make a good metaphor for the notion of choices in life. Choices both
good and bad, the important notion being the choice is ours to make. It's that pesky free will thing. We get to make our own choices.
Some might go so far as to say we have to make our own choices and others
might say their god makes the choice. Those folks lay it all of on god.
Anything good is the will of god, anything bad is their bad choice. With
free will comes responsibility - and in theory we make thoughtful
decisions based on the available information. At least in a perfect world we
do. Sometimes. Of course the minefield of life certainly keeps us on our toes -
until we manage to blow those toes off with a misstep.Dang – life can be
complicated can’t it? Oh well – it would
be boring otherwise IMHO. What fun would that be? The eternal struggle of our
conscience = do this – no, do that- and
so on. And now you know where my saying “Life’s a bitch, Then you die” comes
from. The ongoing WWE tussle in my brain literally wears me out sometimes. Not
often, mind you, but certainly on occasion. It is my contention we live our
lives largely by habit – not having to ponder every decision, simply keeps us functioning and allows us to ponder those things which require pondering.
Chicken or fish for dinner, white or red. Lager or stout. Glenlivet or Macallan - or a nice blend like Johnnie Walker Blue.

Now about that conscience thing. The part of us that helps us distinguish between right and wrong - the repository of that set of principles/values hat guide our moral judgments. We all have one. Its that thing that, hopefully as the late Christopher Hitchens said helps us make the right decision when nobody is looking. Some conscience comes from a religious view, some from a secular viewpoint.

One of the growing fights these days is the battle between globalists and the national populist movements being waged politically. In many folks the conscience has not yet advanced beyond national borders. While his weeks blog is not intended to address that issue, merely point out its existence, one sill cannot but hope more folks come around to a global vision IMHO. The planet grows smaller every day and is it really such a leap to go from the US B9ill of Rights to "Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of
race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other
status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from
slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to
work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these
rights, without discrimination." How does our conscience help shape our consciousness?? Alas, I am afraid that is the cliffhanger for this weeks topic (at least foe me).

As you may have noticed, I am typically of late the only LBC blogger posting from a western state of mind. This weeks comments from my cohorts should be interesting. Ramana, Pravin, Maria and Ashok.

2 comments:

Angels and demons, eh? Most, if not all of us, have a little of each in us, I'm inclined to think. Have yet to meet anyone who is all one or the other though they can seem to be at times. I, too, believe how our life unfolds is based on choices we make, even though I recognize other unknown-to-us factors (including choices others have made) may influence our own. Exacerbating some of the divisions in our nation has been the demonization by groups whose views differ from each other, frequently religion based. One would hope our conscience has considerable effect in shaping our consciousness in the actions we take. Perhaps humankind would be more inclined toward world-wide acceptance of one another if some other form of intelligent life from another planet were to confront us in a less than positive manner. What a disgusting thought, that we'd have to feel threatened by others to unify.